


would it really kill you if we kissed?

by quick_ly



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Coming of Age, F/M, Gen, Spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 17:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4634355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quick_ly/pseuds/quick_ly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaby spends her life trying to stay in one place. She's rarely successful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	would it really kill you if we kissed?

**Author's Note:**

> things that i am: trash. this movie was a giant pile of fun and i am very much holding out hopes for a sequel (even though that'll probably not happen, since it didn't do great at the box office). still, i left it with a lot of feelings. here are some of them. title taken from "drive" by halsey.

It's important to know, she thinks, that this really wasn't the plan. Occasionally, things happen that are completely out of one's control. Not often for her, as one might imagine, but still. She's not immune.

A man comes to her elementary school and takes her into an empty room, and tells her he will take care of her if she just does as he says.

"You know, the world can be a big and scary place sometimes," he says to her, handing over a lolly and smiling in a way that didn't necessarily make her feel uneasy - just interested. "It's best to know your way around it."

Even as a child, Gaby can tell that the man wouldn't probably tell her these things around other adults. Most people her age would be scared. She's intrigued.

Gaby takes a suck of her lolly and eyes the man up and down. He hasn't offered her hugs or condolences, but instead candy and something like safety. She's a kid, her understanding of her current situation is limited at best, but she is smart enough to tell that the promise of safety is maybe not something she should be blasé about.

"What do you want me to do," she asks. "Mr."

The man smiles again then. Very widely.

 

 

 

They ship her off to boarding school because there's not much else to do be done. Not until she's eighteen anyway. They send her to a place that's fine, but just (not posh, not too fancy as to raise eyebrows), where she's instructed to take languages and archery and the like. Where she is to make friends, but not close friends. Just enough so that she has a history.

Her breaks are where the real work is – not just to be a proper young lady, but an agent. She’s taken to a different location every summer, where they teach her how to be different people and get out of a jam, how to manipulate situations so that things are exactly as she pleases. How they please, really.

“Why is nothing ever the same?” she complains to the man who came to fetch her, Waverly, one day while they are getting brunch. She has just turned sixteen.

“They want you to have a wide range of skills,” he says casually, taking a particularly large bite of his frittata.

“They want me to have no connection to anything.” It’s the truth, as far as she can tell. It works the best for them, the people who control every aspect of her life, that she has as little ties as possible. It’s not vital, that she care about anything other than the mission ( _the mission_ being the future, _the mission_ being the thing she has never seen and doesn’t really care for but will one day be expected to always properly fulfill, because they’ve invested time and energy, and _the mission_ is evidently how she is to pay for it, the time and energy she didn’t ask for but that instead just sort of happened upon her).

Waverly is still chewing on his frittata for a moment, looking slightly guilty. As time as gone on, as Gaby has gotten older, she’s noticed he makes this look quite a lot.

“It is better,” he starts, still getting a couple of pieces stuck between his teeth, “for an agent to have as few ties, or as you say, _connections_ , as possible, so as not to give their enemies innocent targets.”

Who would be her enemy? Nobody is ever allowed to know her long enough to properly register that she exists. “But don’t agents also need _connections_ to keep them grounded? To help them keep their moral ground while being presented with tough situations?” She reads a lot of spy novels.

He just smiles at this. “You have your country to give you moral ground. Your country, which has cared for you and helped you, and expects you to return to the favor. There is your moral high ground.”

She thinks to mention that the only reason they ( _he_ , if we’re being honest here) helped was because they saw what was in it for them, but stops. Gaby is smart, smart enough to have considered what her fate as a young abandoned child would have been if the British Intelligence hadn’t decided to step in.

She reads a lot of different books, actually. The sad orphan children tend to not always do so well.

“Besides,” Waverly starts up again, cutting another piece of frittata and smiling as though he has won, “it’s not as though you have no relations in this world.”

“My uncle barely even knows I exists. He probably thinks I have been spending my years in an orphanage in the middle of nowhere.”

“He is actually under the impression that you have been sent to school by a distant relative on your mother’s side, but that is neither here nor there.” She should have known they have something set up, enough so that even though he doesn’t actually care, her Uncle Rudi would never have anything to be suspicious about. “I was in fact referring to myself.”

Gaby raises an eyebrow. “We’re not related.”

“No, no, not by blood, but I do feel that we have a bit of a… special friendship, something rather meaningful.” He smiles at her for a moment, wistfully. “Do you not agree?”

She does, a bit at least. Waverly is always present in a way – the only thing her life that has ever been present, really – and she likes him, for the most part. He’s a nice old man, and he cares about her, as far as she can tell. He’s good, she enjoys his company. But that’s not really the point.

“You have a wife, don’t you Waverly? Something to go home to?”

He suddenly pauses, mid-chew. She can tell that he wants to swallow, but the bite was too big

“Yes well, that’s what it is, isn’t it?” she continues, sitting up and finally starting to cut her own frittata into pieces. “What you have done for me is good, and I really do appreciate our friendship. But that’s all I have. I don’t have anyone else to go to. I don’t even have a home.”

All Gaby has is a country, and it’s not even really hers. It’s just a place where she doesn’t even live all the time that has decided to care because it would be beneficial.

Waverly cares about her more than that, at least, but he still stands by what he’s done, tells her, “your home is England,” before instructing her to eat. And then, after they have been sitting in silence for a while, both picking at their food with their sudden small appetites, he says matter-of-factly, “you do have a home. And it’s a lot better than it could be.”

Gaby often wonders how much of what he tells her is to absolve his own guilt for denying her a childhood. It’s probably true, what he’s saying, but still. She always thinks she can feel something like guilt.

 

 

 

Being an agent is fine. It’s excellent, really, if only because Gaby is so very good at it (as she ought to be, frankly). She bests everyone else and does the right thing, does it for the cause that she very well knows she only gives a shit about because the British got to her first (sometimes, she thinks about if they hadn’t come; she would have been left for a while, probably, but eventually another country would have noticed, and they would be smart as well, and catch onto their own ideas, and alternatively Gaby could be working for any other country, feeling that she owes them for saving her skin; feeling loyalty). But as it is, she does care a bit. She cares for Waverly, and she cares for her country that still isn’t hers (she’s kept her accent, all these years – she’s still a German, technically, even if she doesn’t care about it as much as Britain; at least this way she has roots, an identity entirely made up of being a native German and also a mechanic), and she does what she was trained to do and does it well, and it’s fine and good. It’s simply what has happened to her.

She does it until she’s twenty-five, and has been working as an agent for seven years. She does it until Waverly calls her into to meet him, and tells her to sit down and pours her a scotch, and informs Gaby that what they have been waiting for – what the meaning of it all is, really – has finally come. The reason why the picked her up, why the British decided they would mold her, it’s here. Within a few days, they will drop her off into East Berlin, the home that isn’t really her home (but also is, if anyone asks), and she will be the girl who knows next to nothing about any of it, but wants to live and in addition has very good motor vehicle skills. Her only request: she works as a mechanic. Since they are apparently going for something like fabricated authenticity.

Waverly doesn’t particularly like it. He never likes any of her ideas much, actually, at least not the ones that put herself into the mission (he says the entire point is that she isn’t what she is on a mission, but Gaby argues that her entire entity is the mission, so it shouldn’t matter). She wins this time, since she’s playing herself. Waverly thinks it could be a mistake, but Gaby thinks he couldn’t be more wrong: the hardest part of all this is that now she has to construct herself an identity when she barely even has one. Why not make things just a bit easier?

“They’re spending out an American and Russian,” he tells her as she’s about to leave. “Things could get tricky.”

Well, Gaby thinks, she’s a German who is also kind of a Brit, so chances are it’ll really be a party. At the very least, if things get weird she’ll be at the center of it. Sounds like more fun than what she’s been doing with her life.

 

 

 

The American – Solo – is nice enough. He fancies himself a catch, she thinks, and he’s quite suave, and he gives her lots of wine at his place and she does appreciate that. He is good at what he does, and even if he can clearly tell, she has no reason to fault him for that (she feels the same way, obviously). He’s good. He works. If he fucks up, her life could be in danger, so at the very least she’s happy that it doesn’t look like he fucks up a lot. At least, not colossally.

But the Russian… she doesn’t even fucking know. Illya. Illya Kuryakin. She’s done her research, knows about the fucked up family and the anger problem. Knows he is one of Russia’s best, and also that him and Solo can barely be together for more than five minutes without trying to fight one another to the death (it’s gotten to be quite boring, if she’s being honest). She knows everything there is to know, technically, and yet the man is a fucking mystery. Doesn’t know how to control his anger or drink or even have fun. The man can hardly dance. He’s like a giant Russian robot, genetically programmed to have no feelings and make her life miserable. It’s exhausting.

Except, of fucking course, there are times when he looks at her in this way that somehow says so much, like she’s his entire world even though he barley knows her, and she secretly for a moment wants to be the fiancée showing off her big man. And then he’ll do something stupid or Solo will suddenly stumble along, and it’ll be broken. And she’ll lay awake in her bed that night and consider how easy it would be to just tiptoe into his, just get out of bed and go visit him and poke away until he woke up and gave her a grumpy face which would turn into a long meaningful stare which would turn into–

She doesn’t do it, obviously. It’s just a thought. He’s going to think she betrayed him tomorrow anyways, so this would just make things worse. He’ll think she was trying to make things personal in order to fuck him over even more, which she doesn’t want to do. Really, if there were any other option, she’d go with it.

There isn’t. And Waverly has informed her what is to be done, and she will not fail him, since he’s waited so long. They both have technically. Illya is a footnote in a much bigger plan, and soon enough he will realize it as well.

Still… he looks good sleeping. Like a giant Russian puppy dog. She’s not going to deny the man that.

(And she also thinks about being seventeen, and being on a break somewhere in the countryside and meeting a tall boy who always said the wrong things and was built like a giant, but smiled at her with sunshine and kissed her with passion, and told her that he loved her in a way so genuine it almost broke her heart, because she knew at the end of the summer she would leave and go back to school and never return, because she never was sent to the same place twice anyway, and especially not when she had started to romance the village boy.

Gaby had never been in love, she knows this. But she had appreciated that he could do it so easily, that he somehow really believed what they had was a great romance. She wished at the time, desperately, that she could feel it too, that she could add that to the list of identity traits; _can fall deeply in love_. It would give her a person to go home to.

But it didn’t happen, because the boy was sweet and a good kisser but also not very smart and savvy, and by the end of the summer she was ready to go back to school and also never see him again (he would write, he told her, but it would be to a school that didn’t exist and a person that didn’t either, because even less about her was real to him than the kid could have even guessed). He was heartbroken that they were to be separated, and she was heartbroken because she had failed to care.

Gaby is not in love with Illya, in case that wasn’t clear. She’s known the man for an astonishingly short period of time considering they are sharing a room, if they are going by normal people standards (they aren’t). He can be a child, and rude, and doesn’t know how to have fun or dance for shit or not get weirdly possessive over a woman who isn’t even his fiancée, and he also almost died earlier tonight which is probably not a sign of a great catch. He is a baby, really; a tall, giant-like Russian baby.

Still, he makes her feel something, something more than what she is used to. Gaby has been in the game a while (most of her life, some might say), and has spent a decent amount of time fooling people into thinking she adored them. Basic genuine affection hasn’t always been her forte, unless she counts Waverly, which she doesn’t really, because that affection comes from him recusing her from a possible life of sad orphan-ness. She cannot help loving him. Finding love – not even love, just simply fondness – within oneself for others is not quite as easy.

But she likes Illya. She likes them both, really, Solo being a suave idiot that he is, but she thinks she likes Illya a little more. Not more, just differently. With Solo, she wants to drink wine and play board games and silently and affectionately make fun of nearly everything he does. But with Illya… she wants that stuff too, but also other stuff. Other stuff that is particular to him, that she really would rather Solo have no involvement in (she’s heard to man make love as of an hour ago and really feels like that was enough of that for a lifetime). She wants a lot more of Illya, is what she’s saying.

It’s not much, she knows. But it’s more than she usually feels. And that means a lot to her, more than she would care to admit. So Gaby lies in bed, and thinks about what he will think of her betraying him, and when that hurts too much, she thinks of what it would feel like to leave her own bed and tiptoe over to his, and it’s so fucking little but it feels like a hell of a lot, and _god_ , it’s amazing to feel these things.)

 

 

 

She gives him back to ring because she knows the memory (of what little they had and also what possibly would have been) will hurt too much, and he insists she keep it because he wants her to have the memory, and also he wants to know where she is, and it’s gross and disgusting and she also would very much like to kiss him, and god fucking dammit how hard is it to get a sober moment alone in this fucking hotel? A second later they’re goodbye, and she’s walking away messing with the ring, thinking about how like always, she’s on her way to starting over again.

 

 

 

She meets up with Waverly in the elevator.

“Sorry about your father,” he says, but they both know he doesn’t need to.

“I lost my father a long time ago,” she repeats, still running her fingers over the ring. “That’s what I told Illya, and that’s what I believe.”

Waverly, like always, doesn’t say all that much, and she can tell is mind is going a mile a minute. He does this a lot, starts a conversation and then goes off on a tangent in his mind. She’s prefer it a lot more if he at least kept her updated on what he was thinking.

“Kuryakin, yes. Decent fellow, I thought.”

Gaby nods her head.

“And the American, Solo. Lot of skill there.”

“Yes,” Gaby says. “He’s very good at his job.”

Waverly stands there awkwardly for a bit, not saying anything. Then: “Interesting. Quite interesting.”

Gaby starts to consider that he might be starting to lose his sanity, and briefly thinks about how old he is (not _that_ old, surely; not old enough that she should be worrying). What he says next doesn’t make her feel any better.

“You too, Gabriella, are quite good at you job. I’m very pleased with your work.”

It’s weird. It’s all incredibly weird. The elevator stops, and he suddenly says that he is going to take her for coffee in the hotel restaurant, and so they go and sit and talk about the mission and his wife and other things, and it’s all the little bit strange and unusual, but she supposes they were due for a meaningful talk. He is now, after all, quite frankly the closest thing she has to a relation (he has been for years, but it feels somehow more official now that her only actual relations are dead). These are just the sort of things relations do, apparently.

 

 

 

That’s actually not true, at least not completely, because twenty minutes later they’re finished they’re chat and he has dragged her back upstairs, where she is again in the company of Illya and Solo, and he is suddenly informing the three that they will be working together again, as a team. Something about Istanbul and a thing called U.N.C.L.E., and apparently them doing so well together here that he feels they could do more good (which she thinks might be a joke, since they barely made it out alive). And suddenly she understands that Waverly is not getting old and senile, but was instead hatching a plan.

Goddamn bastard. He’ll get an earful the next time she sees him.

Solo is groaning like a toddler. Illya is downing a scotch (finally!), and Gaby is thinking of what she is going to yell at Waverly the next time they are in even the closest of proximity.

A moment later, Illya slightly slams his glass on the table and goes to refill it. Solo turns around, slowly.

“Well,” he says, a certain grudge to his voice, “since I suppose we are leaving the city in the very near future, I for one am going to go enjoy the pleasures that the downstairs bar and it’s inhabitants have to offer. Would either of you wish to join?”

Illya just sort of holds up his filled glass. He’s staring hard at Gaby as he takes a sip, and she’s looking at him when she replies to Solo. “I’m good. But thank you.”

He makes a rude comment about the two of them as he leads the balcony. Illya goes to fill a glass for Gaby.

“Well,” he says, think accent and all, “I suppose it is good I made you keep the ring.”

She wants to berate him for it, but instead just smiles and takes the drink, downing it. Because she can feel it. She can feel the connection coming on through, and it’s quite frankly delightful.

(And for the record, the man is a very fun drunk. And also, as one might think, very skilled at making any hints of possible love making undetectable. Solo suspects, of course, but cannot find proof and they don’t give it up, and he walks away thoroughly annoyed, and Gaby is unsure if it is at them for having sex in his hotel room (not on the bed, because they wouldn’t go there after what Solo has done it in), or alternatively at them for not having sex and making their future missions that much more filled with tension. Neither Illya nor Gaby have any intention of enlightening him in the near future.

The men fight with each other, then fight with her, and then all drink and start to plan and arrange their scheme (her and Illya are a fake couple again, unsurprisingly). It’s simply ridiculous. She cannot help but adore it.)


End file.
